Kindle Review – Kindle Fire Review, Kindle 4 Review

Oprah not only endorses the Kindle as her favorite gadget, she also has a Kindle discount – OPRAHWINFREY gives you the Kindle for just $309 – that’s a $50 kindle discount valid till Nov 1st. A pretty good deal – although i really wish Amazon took down the Kindle’s price to $200 or so. It’s interesting to see the types of headlines that are being used -

• The Money Times says – Oprah stoutly recommends Amazon’s Kindle on her talk show.
• Examiner.com asks – Is Oprah’s endorsement of the Amazon Kindle the kiss of death for books as we know them? A little bit premature i think.
• New York Times asks – Will the Kindle get an Oprah bump?
• Lisnews is talking about how the Kindle launch is delayed – Amazon delays UK launch. The consensus seems to be that Amazon couldn’t get the wireless part figured out with a UK network. A little bit diffficult to believe that Amazon would have a problem figuring out such a core element.
• The Financial Times says – Oprah likely to kindle big interest in digital books.
• And finally, Slashdot succinctly states – Amazon Kindle endorsed by Oprah.

On to the original article -

1. Oprah loves the Kindle (the pictures prove it). She says it’s her favorite gadget … EVER.  Oprah also feels about the Kindle – ‘life changing for me’, ‘the most amazing thing’, ‘the wave of the future’.
2. On Friday, Oprah will talk about the Kindle as her favorite gadget in front of the same audience that turns Oprah’s book recommendations (even obscure books) into overnight bestsellers.

Here are three pictures, 1 from Oprah’s website, and 2 from the video on Amazon’s main page. If you disregard the bright light it’s easy to make out that it’s a Kindle, and the last photo at the end of the post shows Oprah with the Kindle Cover showing.

The Kindle shines in Oprah

Oprah shines with kindle

I’ll start with a few key facts to keep in mind regarding Oprah’s impact (courtesy Wikipedia and the internet)

• When Oprah selected Steinbeck’s East of Eden in 2003 for her book club, it had a 7 week run at the top of the New York Times paperback bestsellers list. This is a 51 year old book.
• In a book on Oprah and her book club, Kathleen Rooney described Oprah as

“a serious American intellectual who pioneered the use of electronic media, specifically television and the Internet, to take reading – a decidedly non-technological and highly individual act – and highlight its social elements and uses in such a way to motivate millions of erstwhile non-readers to pick up books.”

• The Oprah effect turns obscure books into million selling bestsellers -

Because of the book club’s wide popularity, many obscure titles have become very popular bestsellers, increasing sales by as many as a million copies at the height of the book club’s popularity; this occurrence is known colloquially as the Oprah effect.[1]

The Amazon Kindle seems to fit in perfectly with what Oprah has been doing with her book club – help revive a love for reading. And the mention of the Amazon Kindle on Oprah’s book club is the sort of positive endorsement Jeff Bezos probably dreams about all the time. If I were Amazon I’d throw in a $50 discount (for a week only) to encourage more sales.

The Amazon Kindle has two major barriers to overcome -

1. The Price Point.
2. Getting the word out, and giving people the opportunity to sell themselves on the device.

Endorsements like Oprah’s address 2. better than just about anything I can think of. Even more than having the Kindle in store. Oprah’s really high credibility means that she wouldn’t be endorsing it if she didn’t truly love it. That’s what I feel – that like pretty much every Kindle Owner, Oprah used the Kindle, loved it and agreed to do an endorsement.

I’ll be adding in some Google Trends graphs to show the increase in interest in the Amazon Kindle due to Oprah’s selection. And you can always buy the Kindle at Amazon. One last thing – I bet everyone on the Friday Live in Chicago show gets a free kindle .

Oprah reads Amazon Kindle

BTW at booksummit (social network for reading), we’re giving away a free kindle – to be eligible you have to be an active user, and sign up before October 31st.

Filed under: kindle, kindle 2, thoughts Tagged: | 10% kindle amazon, kindle $50 promo code, oprah, oprah favorite gadget, oprah kindle, oprah recommends kindle